One of the systems studied in the Fraden lab is rod shaped colloidal viruses in aqueous suspension. These suspensions exhibit entropy driven liquid crystalline phases. Current research focuses on describing the phase behavior of suspensions of rods, and mixtures of rods and spheres, rods and polymers or rods of different sizes. We use the bacteriophage fd as our model rod. It exhibits cholesteric and smectic phases.

For images and presentations of our research click on the links above.

Recent projects studying colloidal liquid crystals with fd virus rods include:

• Phase behavior of thin and thick rod mixtures
• Rod Sphere Mixtures (ppt)
• Movies of Isotropic-Smectic coexistence induced by adding attraction inducing polymers
• Direct measurements of theNematic Angular Distribution Function

Rod Sphere Mixtures

Other interesting questions:

Entropy driven phase separation in biology? (Goodsell)